Increase your confidence as a manager

Here are a few notes on how to gain confidence.

Confidence is important

Why?
Because confidence allows you to access your abilities. Confidence allows you to access your knowledge. If you lack confidence, if you are feeling nervous or afraid or overwhelmed, then your mind becomes fuzzy and you can't think straight. If you are feeling overwhelmed, then you can't remember what you know, and you can't do what you normally can do.

Fear, being the opposite of confidence, reduces your ability to perform well.
Confidence being the opposite of fear, increases your ability to perform well.

So how can you develop confidence?

Two ways to develop more confidence.

Practice and develop your skills and knowledge.

Discipline your thinking, and train yourself to say only the right things to yourself.

Method 1. Practice and develop your skills and knowledge

Just as confidence allows you to access your abilities and knowledge, this won't do you any good if you don't have the ability or you don't have the knowledge. Some misguided people try to get by on self-confidence alone, and don't bother to develop the skill. Good performance requires self-confidence and skills, and knowledge, combined!

And here is the point, the more skill, the more knowledge, and the more you practice, then the more confidence you will gain.

If you know what you are doing, then it is easier to feel confident. If you know, that you don't know what you are doing, then it is difficult, (and wrong) to feel confident.

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Method 2. Discipline your thinking and train yourself to say only the right things to yourself

Confidence is an emotion. And emotions are a product of the mind. Therefore, your confidence levels are a product of your mind-set. You feel whatever you think about. You feel whatever you believe to be true. So for example, if you believe you will win, then you will feel confident. If you believe you can't win, then you won't feel confident.

If you tell yourself you are probably not good enough, then you won't feel confident. If you tell yourself you can win, and then you will feel more confident.

Here is the point.

Get into the habit of talking yourself up. Get out of the habit of talking yourself down.

Too many people have heard and accepted the following terrible advice:

"Don't get your hopes up. Then you won't ever be disappointed"

"Always expect the worst. Then you won't ever be disappointed"

This is terrible advice, because it says that you should be telling yourself to feel hopeless and to expect the worst. This is the opposite of developing confidence, and generates hopelessness and a sense of doom.

Some people live like that their whole lives.

Let us get into the habit of doing the opposite.
Let us consciously and as a matter of principle:

Get our hopes up! Visualise a successful outcome.

Expect things to turn out well, (in the end).

If you cannot see yourself winning; if you can see no light at the end of the tunnel, then you won't feel strong enough to continue. But if you do see yourself winning, if you can see light at the end of the tunnel, then you will feel more confident and motivated to continue. And then, only by continuing on, with confidence, will you win.

Let us put this all together.

How can you feel more confident?

Here are the six steps.

Recognise the benefits of having confidence and decide to work on building up your self-confidence.

Practice, practice and practice again to develop the specific technical skills you need at work so that you become a technical expert in your field.

Learn and study. Gain knowledge. Know your stuff. Resolve to know more about your topic than anyone else in the office.

Rid yourself of any tendency to "expect the worst" and to "not get your hopes up".

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